• NATO may raise defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2030, according to the FT.
• Trump has threatened to leave NATO if it does not spend more on defense.
• Mark Rutte, NATO's head, said that Europe understands it must do more on shared security.

NATO members may increase their defense spending to 3% of GDP, in part due to pressure by President-elect Donald Trump.

Three people involved in the preliminary talks told the Financial Times that NATO intends to make a short-term pledge to increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP, moving to 3% by 2030.

NATO countries are committed to spending at least 2% of GDP on defense but several, including Italy and Spain, have fallen short.

This year, Poland has led the alliance on defense, spending 4.12% of GDP followed by Estonia at 3.43%, and the US at 3.38%, according to Reuters.

The talks are in the preliminary stages, according to people speaking to the FT, and will be formally agreed upon at the NATO summit in June.

The discussions to increase spending come in the wake of Trump's impending return to the White House.

Trump has long been skeptical of the alliance, and threatened to withdraw from NATO during his first term if members did not start spending more on defense.

Last month, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said that Europe understands it must do more to ensure shared security. "That starts with spending more and also fielding more capabilities," he said.

When asked about NATO's defense spending, Rutte told the FT earlier this month that he had a number in mind but did not clarify what it would be. "But clearly, when you look at the capability targets, [when] you look at the gaps still there … It is clear that, with 2%, you cannot get there," he said.

Rutte was appointed NATO head earlier this year and has gained a reputation as a "Trump whisperer" after successfully pacifying the President-elect's threat to leave the alliance in 2018.

NATO defense spending has accelerated in recent years, but experts told BI earlier this year that that has little to do with Trump.

"Pretty much all of the increases, I would say, since 2014 are a response to Russia," said Edward Hunter Christie, a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and a former NATO official.

William Alberque, a former NATO arms control expert and now director of strategy, technology, and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told BI's Mia Jankowicz early this year that some officials may be quietly pleased with the external pressure from Trump, allowing them to scapegoat him for their already-planned spending decisions.

Representatives for NATO did not immediately reply to a request by BI for comment.

• Most Democrats aren't interested in Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's "DOGE" initiative.
• But a handful of them are signaling an openness to working with DOGE on specific issues.
• "A broken clock is right twice a day," said one DOGE-curious House Democrat.

As Republicans rush to embrace Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's "Department of Government Efficiency," most Democrats have taken a dismissive, even adversarial approach to the new initiative.

"Musk is a narcissist, a grifter, and a self-serving plutocrat," said Democratic Rep. Greg Casar of Texas. "I don't have my hopes up that Elon Musk is going to do anything other than really awful, stupid, self-serving stuff."

It's not hard to see why. Ramaswamy was one of the more right-wing 2024 GOP presidential candidates, while Musk — who just spent an immense sum of his own money to get Donald Trump elected — has emerged in recent years as a Democratic boogeyman. And while the exact contours of DOGE's agenda remain vague, there are already signs that progressive priorities could fall victim to Musk and Ramaswamy's proposals for deep spending cuts.

Yet a handful of Democratic lawmakers have signaled a willingness to engage, eyeing DOGE as an unlikely opportunity to push their own long-standing policy goals.

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, see tackling wasteful military spending as a potential point of common cause with DOGE.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, meanwhile, became the first Democrat to join the House's DOGE caucus on Tuesday. He told BI that his "singular focus" would be restructuring the Department of Homeland Security by making the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Secret Service each report directly to the president.

"If this is where that conversation is going to happen, I'm happy to be at the table," said Moskowitz. "And if they want to do stupid stuff, I'll call it out and I'll vote against it."

The three lawmakers' DOGE-curious posturing also offers an early look at how some Democrats, fresh off of a defeat in the 2024 election, plan to cautiously engage with a Trump administration that's set to pursue a more radical transformation of the country than the first time around.

Khanna, a Silicon Valley-based progressive who remains cordial with Musk, appears to be taking the billionaire businessman seriously when he says he wants to examine the Pentagon's budget, citing Musk's past criticism of bloated defense contracts. The congressman has also previously suggested that Democrats have unduly alienated Musk in recent years.

"If Musk is going to help bring accountability to defense contractors, that's something that Democrats should welcome," said Khanna.

But other progressives who want military spending cuts are much more suspicious.

"I highly doubt that one of the largest defense contractors in the United States — and by that, I mean Elon Musk — is going to opt for the federal government to cut the money that he is receiving directly from them," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. "He relies on the federal government to give him money."

Sanders, who wrote on X that Musk "is right" when it comes to bloated military spending, may simply be using the unexpected synergy to highlight an issue he's long cared about. The Vermont senator told BI that he hasn't directly engaged with Musk, and that it remains to be seen how seriously the SpaceX founder should be taken on the issue.

"I would hope that he is serious," said Sanders. "If you want to save taxpayer dollars, you do it not by cutting programs for hungry children, but by getting rid of the waste and fraud in the military."

Despite these small areas of potential agreement, much of what Musk and Ramaswamy have floated so far is likely to be anathema to the average Democratic lawmaker. There's a reason why it's Republicans, not Democrats, who are set to meet with the duo at the Capitol on Thursday.

Last week, Musk said that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established by President Barack Obama that regulates financial services, should be eliminated. And Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota warned that Musk and Ramaswamy want to "defund Planned Parenthood" after the duo called out the organization as a recipient of "federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended."

That's not deterring lawmakers like Khanna and Moskowitz just yet.

"Obviously, if they're targeting areas that are going to lead to less education funding or less consumer protection, we need to speak up passionately, vociferously, and oppose it," said Khanna. "But our opposition will be much more effective and reasonable if we're willing to work with them on areas where there is government fraud and abuse."

"Some of these recommendations, I'm sure, will be horrible," said Moskowitz. "But a broken clock is right twice a day, so if there are things that they find that we can improve, shouldn't we give it a chance?"

But while Khanna could end up serving on a new DOGE subcommittee set to be chaired by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Moskowitz says he's steering clear.

"I'm not interested in doing anything Marjorie Taylor Greene touches," said Moskowitz. "She's not a serious member."

• Sen. Bernie Sanders told Business Insider he's reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
• He has no qualms about working with Elon Musk on any good ideas he has about spending.
• Sanders also cited areas of mutual interest with RFK Jr. on health and Trump on credit-card debt.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is extending an olive branch to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.

In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, the Vermont senator listed areas of common ground with Elon Musk, a cochair of a new extragovernmental body aiming to cut costs, as well as with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health and Trump on credit debt.

"If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I'll work with them," Sanders, who at 83 is the longest-serving independent in Congress, told BI.

In Musk, Sanders may find an ally to cut defense spending

Sanders made headlines on Sunday when he posted on X his support for Musk's pitch to curb defense spending.

Musk, whom Sanders has previously criticized as a threat to democracy, responded with a laughing emoji and said, "Maybe we can find some common ground."

Sanders told BI he had no qualms about working with Musk on the Department of Defense's spending, or on any other good ideas he has as cochair of DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency announced by Trump.

"Many of the things he did during the campaign were really ugly. On the other hand, he's a very smart guy," Sanders said, adding that "he is absolutely right" to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in over seven years.

"We need a strong military, but we don't need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now," he said.

While Musk has yet to outline specific plans to curb defense spending, he has criticized the Department of Defense's F-35 program and cited its $841 billion budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his mission to cut costs. In April, Sanders pushed to cut $88.6 billion, or 10%, from the military budget.

The amendment was outvoted, and Sanders slammed lawmakers, saying they're pouring money into an unaudited department.

In 2021, the Pentagon said that it was trying to learn from each failed audit but that it would take until 2028 to make all the logistical changes necessary to meet standards.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Finding connection through Kennedy's MAHA movement

Sanders, a cochair of the Senate health committee, told BI he also saw common ground with Kennedy, particularly when it comes to ultraprocessed food.

Kennedy, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faces a tough confirmation hearing, given his opposition to vaccines and plans to take on food giants and industry lobbyists.

If confirmed, he has pledged to "make America healthy again" by tackling chronic disease. He promises to ban processed foods from school meals and remove food dyes from the US food system, among other measures.

Sanders is game for a shake-up of our nutrition system. This week, he's leading a Senate hearing on ultraprocessed foods, interrogating how processed products are regulated and how they affect health.

"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders told BI.

He cited the millions of people living with obesity and diabetes and the ripple effects across all sectors. Diabetes care now costs the US an estimated $400 billion a year, a GlobalData analysis found. And a recent report said the military was struggling to recruit young people who meet the physical requirements to be enlisted.

"Our kids are not healthy enough. In the long run, you want a healthy society as an end in itself," Sanders said. "We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That's what we want. And if the industry is giving our kids food that's making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that's an issue that we've got to deal with."

Sanders, who has previously criticized Kennedy's views on vaccines, added: "I think a lot of what RFK is saying is kind of crazy and driven by conspiracy theory. Some of what he's saying is not crazy.

"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."

Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Sanders wants Trump to stick to his proposed cap on credit-card interest rates

While Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they may have common ground on credit-card interest rates.

Credit-card debt held by American consumers hit $1.17 trillion in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Donald Trump came out with an idea during this campaign. He said, you know what, credit-card interest rates, which in some cases right now are 20, 25%, should not be higher than 10%. Well, you know what? I agree with that," Sanders said.

While Trump said a cap would be "temporary" to help Americans "catch up" with payments, the suggestion made a splash. Mark Cuban, a longtime critic of Trump, mocked him for going even further than "self-described socialist Bernie Sanders."

It would be tough to drive through Congress, as Sanders knows. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tabled an interest-rate cap of 15% in 2019, which went nowhere.

Now Sanders is challenging Trump to wield his strong mandate to make this a key issue.

"We'll see if Mr. Trump is prepared to keep his word. We're looking forward, and we will work with some Republicans on that issue," Sanders said.

Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"Where Trump and Republicans make sense, happy to work with them," Sanders said. "And we will be in vigorous opposition to many of their policies, which to me are extremely distasteful."